How Far Have We Come?

The final installment of the CP/YPP project: race and segregation.

by Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: May 9, 2007

This is the final installment of a collaboration between City Paper and the local political blog Young Philly Politics. This week's topic is race and segregation in Philadelphia, and your writer is Daniel Urevick-Ackelsberg.

Race and segregation in Philadelphia are not traditionally things that many people like to discuss. They evoke uncomfortable memories of Frank Rizzo raiding the offices of the Black Panthers, stripping the men down to their underwear and parading them in front of the local press. And, of an all-white Democratic party running the city while mostly African-American neighborhoods are bulldozed for "urban renewal."

In my lifetime, it has meant racially charged mayoral races, white flight and a city that feels perpetually split apart. And lest anyone think we are in some sort of post-racial utopia in Philadelphia, a quick check of the popular site Phillyblog shows a couple of people talking about public housing residents as "vermin" and insinuations that Chaka Fattah's mother is in a cult. Meanwhile, Michael Nutter has been deemed "too white" to attract African-American votes and an Inquirer profile of Bob Brady noted that racial epithets were casually being tossed around a bar where he was campaigning.

This, of course, is all before Monday's mayoral debate, which I'll touch upon later.

Today, Philadelphia is the nation's sixth most segregated big city. More than a third of schoolchildren go to schools where the population is more than 90 percent of their own race while poverty, and the murder rate it begets, is overwhelmingly confined to communities of color. Although we love to highlight them, integrated, stable neighborhoods are still the exception, rather than the rule.

The news isn't all bad, though.

For this year's mayoral race, the latest polls show racial voting patterns being turned upside down. Nutter has gone to the top with largely white support, and was endorsed by the Northeast Times. My personal bete noire, Tom Knox, is capturing a significant amount of votes from African-Americans.

Race, simply, is not the same issue that it was in the past. So, have we advanced as a city, or is it that we just don't talk about it anymore? Are we acknowledging the challenges we face and solving problems, or papering over them and hoping they go away? And, given the incredibly different opportunities in life that the average white child in Philadelphia will see, as opposed to his African-American counterpart, is it possible to have a discussion like this without coming back to class? Lastly, what can we, and the next mayor, do to change course as a city?

YPP readers offered myriad thoughtful responses. (As of Tuesday morning, there were 100 posts; check them out at youngphillypolitics.com.) There is one, in particular, that is important to touch on. "Short Shrift" talked about the evolving nature of racism as he sees it:

Most younger, privileged people ... practice a particular kind of color-blind racism, where racial markers and prejudices are debiologized and translated into attitudes about work, family structure, to a certain extent education, etc. � what they see as middle-class values. Screen "Do the Right Thing" for a group of 18-year-old suburbanites, and you'll have one white student after another praising Mookie, because he has a job and spends some time with his son. They see every other black or Latino person in Bed-Stuy as idle, lazy. And they all hate Pino, because he uses the word "n-----." That's what "racism" is for these kids � either cartoonish hatred or even more often, the use of racist language.

What most people with these kind of racial attitudes like is someone who allows them to be color-blind � to act as though race doesn't exist. Anyone who's perceived to be making a racial appeal, on either side, is suspect.

Now, back to Nutter vs. Fattah. While there is certainly room to say Nutter will be the better mayor (he received City Paper's endorsement), much of the criticism of Fattah emanates from his direct appeals to lower-class, largely African-American voters. Fattah has, perhaps clumsily, told Philadelphians that they should work harder to help the less fortunate, and has implied that we might need to make some sacrifices to do it.

Nutter, who certainly cares about the plight of lower-class African-Americans, has not. While tax cuts may be the answer to Philadelphia's economic decline, pushing them as a cure for what ails Philadelphia certainly will not make middle-class white people leave their comfort zone. This is not to criticize Nutter, but considering that tax cuts have little relevance to the 25 percent of people in the city (mostly African-Americans) living in poverty, is the perceived color-blindness of this race that we have moved into a post-racial utopia, or does the "colorblind" agenda of many reformers paper over very real, deep schisms in Philadelphia today? (The answer: Partly, yes, to both. But it'd take another column to fully explain.)

In the final mayoral debate on Monday, race finally reared its head. When Nutter defended the civil-rights concerns of his plan to declare states of emergencies in largely African-American neighborhoods by saying that as an African-American man, he would make sure those concerns were placated, Fattah responded by saying that Nutter had to "remind himself that he's an African-American." Fattah's comment, which drew audible gasps, is largely indefensible, but there are some very real concerns with a policy that disproportionately impacts African-Americans, especially those deemed working class to poor, in a campaign where African-Americans, especially working class to poor African-Americans, don't support you.

Progress aside, race and class divisions still exist. We thank the mayoral candidates for generally running a campaign on the issues and hope that both the new mayor, and all self-identified progressives, can continue to have real, concrete conversations about race and class in our city.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

 

All reader comments are subject to our Terms of Use. By clicking Post Comment, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms.

Name	please enter your name
Email (will not be published)	please enter a valid email
Comment	please enter a comment
Enter the security code on the right in the textbox below.
Security Code	please enter the code
	Join the City Paper Mailing List

"Removable as Charged"
The Bell Curve
The Philly Nightmare
Justin Wolfers
Michael's Momentous Momentum
Ask A Candidate
Who are the Deciders?